To be fair, when we heard: "Vive le Québec libre!" in 1967 from Charles de Gaulle that so energized the good folks in Quebec, we were beside ourselves with anticipation and hope that Canada would split up so we could help ourselves to the nice bits, starting with the Maritimes, Alberta and BC.

But, as a certain Russian professor has opined, it's more likely that the US will break up - probably along the Red - Blue divide.

For a know-it-all, you sure don't know much.

You have confused so much stuff in the first sentence alone that I know that none of the rest of it could possibly be worth reading.

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are
full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” Charles Bukowski

So I only caught the last hour of the debate.
I'll catch up later over the weekend, perhaps watch the 'small kids' one that happened earlier.

Of the hour that I did see, Trump was pretty quiet, Fiorina looked strong, Christie came out of his shell (although sad to see him trot out 9/11 happened near him at every opportunity - again), and Paul gave a decent showing too.

Some of the questions CNN threw out were ridiculous. What would your code name be?
Come on... talk about soft ball.

Dems in a month.
Will Biden be there?

I agree. When the contestants started to get interesting, Tapper would cut them off, talk through them and change the subject to something much less important like the debate about vaccines or what X said about Y. Rubio really started to talk seriously about Putin, but was cut short before the idea was fully developed. Fiorina was strong, but used a couple of talking points (like the statues - or the call to Bibi and the Ayatollah) - that I've heard her use in all her stump speeches, so she sounded scripted at times (she was). We need the field cut down to 5, and soon.

Kasich and to a lesser extent Fiorina strike me as the sane ones. The others? Oh dear. Trump just seems not to be very bright at all. His nonsense about vaccines really summed up the guy for me. Walker looks done and dusted (thank goodness). Huckabee and Cruz confimed their clown car status.

But this is the intelligent political party supported by intelligent people, or so I've been told.

For once I agree with you. Fiorina could help herself if she smiled occasionally. I appreciated Cruz' discussion regarding how to propose a candidate for the Supreme Court, but he has a rather off-putting high-pitched delivery. Perhaps a good legal mind, but he'll be staying in the Senate.

Yeah the other point here is that there were also two medical doctors on the stage with him, and neither of them called him a fcking moron for that.

But yeah I agree that Kasich is the one that is talking the most sense, which means that he has no chance of winning.

I think Carson at least corrected him on it, which I think is about as close as you can get on CNN to calling someone a "fcking moron". I think we began to see the turning of the tide in this debate and hopefully Trump will now fade into the background, before he rips up his contract and runs as an independent.

None of them seem particularly inspiring as public speakers, all a little insipid.

Cruz supported John Roberts when he was appointed. He only got his knickers in a twist when Roberts effectively was the person who ruled for the ACA in the two cases brought to the Supreme Court. You have to laugh when conservative judges are deemed "not conservative enough" by the right wing crazies.

If Reagan was running today, he would be denounced as a RINO.

One would hope that something like being a vaccine denier would make most people instantly cross Trump off their lists. Sadly I fear a lot of people will be nodding sagely and thinking someone is finally standing up to the big nonspiracy. That two doctors on stage don't loudly shut him down on it is worrying. Along with the feeling that someone (Kasich) talking sense is a vote loser makes me very concerned for the whole dynamic. Fiorina perpetuated the Planned Parenthood lies too. Lying to get votes, great.

In many ways she reminds me of Margaret Thatcher...aka The Iron Maiden...although Fiorina could be The Ice Maiden. .

Now we're two debates down, is anyone else more than a bit concerned that there are actually people out there who are straight up, no joke willing to vote for Trump, in a non-ironic way?

Also, I saw on reddit earlier that Bernie Sanders managed to gain over 45,000 new twatter followers during the debates, while the best twatter performer of the GOP (Fiorina), only managed 26,000.